A senior official at the Department of Environment has claimed that 350 square meters of forests and grasslands are destroyed every second in Iran. Hamid Gashtasb, director of Biomes and Regional Affairs Office at DOE, said on Sunday, “We have to admit that nature has suffered extensively at our hands,” ISNA reported. He pointed to the role of people in preservation of nature and said the most successful conservation efforts in the world have all been people-driven. “We have to reconcile man, nature and sustainable development to protect what’s left of our environment and help restore it,” he said. By some estimates, about 142,000 hectares of forestlands are destroyed for various reasons in Iran, prompting experts to warn that unless swift action is taken, the country will not have any forests left in 60 years.
